In the pitched battles over immigration, rhetorical binaries dominate. Republicans refer to migrants as aliens. Democrats trumpet innocent children traumatized by extremist Trump-era practices. Migrants are either good or they’re bad, and in the imaginations of politicians and pundits, it’s possible to put some people into one category and other people into the other. Where talking points end, laws and policies begin. Under the illusion that people can easily be boxed, immigration law assigns privileges and sets law enforcement priorities based on markers of undesirability. Born in [...]
Don’t tie immigration law reform to El Paso attack
When Donald Trump used the latest gun massacre to urge support for his pet project, clamping down on migration, no one could be surprised. His path to the presidency, like his time in office, is paved with anti-migrant fear-mongering. Already his reelection campaign has embraced the specter of a migrant invasion, and at a campaign rally he entertained fantasies about shooting migrants. Clearly, President Trump is driving the United States toward a new low. But disturbing as it is, in tying immigration law reform to domestic terrorism, he is not carving a new path. A quarter-century ago, the [...]
ICE family prison population shows slight upward tick
Despite President Trump’s virulent anti-migrant rhetoric and his administration’s heavy-handed approach to immigration law enforcement, immigration officials held only slightly more parents and children in its families-only facilities under his tenure as under his predecessor, President Obama. Government statistics I obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show remarkable consistency in the number of people locked up in family immigration prisons from October 1, 2016 to September 24, 2018. In the two years covered in the released data, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement [...]
Expedited suffering
When it comes to President Trump’s attacks on migrants, his administration’s latest policies prove that there are no limits. What started with a Trump Tower claim in June 2015 that Mexican rapists were streaming across the border has morphed into a wholesale attack on people fleeing for their lives. At every step, the administration has turned to imprisonment as its favored means of punishing migrants who are already here and convincing others to stay away. Immigration and Customs Enforcement already holds more people in its facilities than ever before. Its cousin agency within the U.S. [...]
In 2018, ICE detention population reached another all-time daily high
Under President Trump, ICE has seared itself into the public consciousness for its sweeping attitude toward migrants. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the administration’s hardline approach than the growing size of its detention population. Official statistics I obtained through a FOIA request reveal that, on average, 42,188 people were detained by ICE during the 2018 fiscal year, breaking the government’s previous high set one year earlier. Known as the average daily population (ADP), ICE’s daily running tally shifts remarkably from month to month. In June 2018, for example, the agency [...]
Misplaced private prison outrage at financial industry’s step away
Private prison corporations have done well under the Obama and Trump administrations, but not without a shortage of criticism. Amidst the latest push by migrants’ advocates to limit the business of human confinement, Bank of America announced this week that it will roll back its involvement with the industry that operates much of the nation’s immigration prison system. For decades, private prison corporations have relied mightily on mainstream financial institutions to operate their prison estates. “Despite their substantial coffers, private prison corporations can’t operate without [...]
In Arizona immigration prison, someone enters segregation every 10 days
Arizona’s Eloy Detention Center, where private prison corporation CoreCivic holds about 1,400 of ICE’s immigration prisoners, used solitary confinement fifty times in a recent 17-month period, government records show. In response to a FOIA request, I obtained ICE logs of every instance in which someone was placed in segregation at the isolated prison from September 2017 to February 2019. The records paint the picture of a facility that uses segregation to punish people who violate rules or when there aren’t enough resources to help the people locked up. “Approaching Eloy after sunset, there [...]
Criminalizing humanitarianism
President Trump claims his administration’s heavy-handed immigration policies make us safer. But a criminal trial in Arizona this week shows that, in the Trump era, safety has lost its meaning. Federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against activist Scott Daniel Warren for doing nothing more than giving food, water, and shelter to migrants trekking through the desert. The stakes are high for Warren and for everyone concerned about unrestrained border policing. Since the days of Trump’s first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department has feverishly pursued migrants. [...]